To:APOLLINARIA YAKUBOVA[1]

Written:Written October 26, 1900Published:First published in 1930 inLenin Miscellany XIII.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      pages47b-48a.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Iclearly see two trends also in your letter to a friend:
one quite legitimately lays the stress on the need for economic struggle,
the need to be able to make use of the workers’ legal societies as well,
“to respond in diverse ways to the day-to-day vital needs of the
workers”, and so on. All this is legitimate and correct. You are mistaken
if you think that the revolutionaries “are opposed to legal societies”,
that such societies are “hateful” to them, that they “turn their backs
on society”, and so on. The revolutionaries too recognise the necessity of
economic struggle, of responding also to the day-to-day vital needs, and of
learning to make use of legal societies as well. Not only have the
revolutionaries never and nowhereadvisedto turn one’s back on
society, but on the contrary have stressed that it is essential for
Social-Democracy totake the leadin the social movement and to
unite under the leadership of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party all
the democratic elements. However, it is imperative to take care that the
legal societies and purely economic organisations shouldnot
separatethe workers’ movement from Social-Democracy and revolutionary
political struggle, but that they should, on the contrary,link them as
closely and indissolubly as possible. But in your letter there is also
that tendency (a harmful and, in my opinion, thoroughly reactionary one),
the tendency toseparatethe workers’ movement from
Social-Democracy and revolutionary political struggle—to put off the
political tasks, to replace theconcept “political struggle” with the concept “struggle for legal
rights”, and so on.

Howto draw the line between the sound and useful tendency and the
harmful one?  I believe there is no need for me to persuade you who have
already had a taste of “meetings abroad” that we must not confine
ourselves to mere talk. And would it not be ridiculous to fear examination
of the question in print since it has already been discussed for a long
time in letters and debates. Why should debates at meetings and writing
letters be considered permissible and elucidation of controversial issues
in the press a “most harmful thing capable only (???) of amusing our
enemies”? This I cannot understand. Only polemics in the press can
precisely establish the dividing line I am referring to, for some people
are often bound to go to extremes. Of course struggle in the press will
cause more ill feeling and give us a good many hard knocks, but we are not
so thin-skinned as to fear knocks! To wish for struggle without knocks,
differences without struggle, would be the height of naïveté, and if
the struggle is wagedopenlyit will be a hundred times better
than foreign and Russian “Gubarevism”, and will lead, I repeat, a hundred
times faster to lastingunity.

[1]Avariant of part of the letter (see present edition, Vol. 34, pp. 51–54).—Ed.